Amazon is now automatically playing fullscreen video ads on Fire TV
Almost every smart TV platform is, at this point, a billboard for ads with your apps sprinkled in, but where...
That's why piracy is back on the menu.
That has nothing to do with piracy or not. Its just a device to play media. You can use a firetv to 100% stream pirated content via kodi or plex and still have to see this shit.
It can be, in some way. For example when content is exclusive to video streaming platforms which are only available through these devices.
People are desperate to justify stealing stuff, cus no one wants to be the bad guy in their own head.
“Gas prices going up? To the high seas I go!”
It's unbelievable. The dumb fuckers literally figured out a way to beat piracy. High quantity, easily accessible content at an appetizable price. Even one for TV, one for music, $10-15 a month, I had no issue. Everyone made out like a bandit, I was satisfied, and they all made billions.
Now you can't even use YouTube without being bombarded with ads, and streaming is quickly becoming worse than cable was. Piracy is definitely back on the table, and the fuckers don't have license to whine about it this time. They literally had it licked, but then got too greedy, so fuck them.
Or you know have the sense god gave goats and be able to see the neon sign as they have been blowing out Amazon home devices for years. Now they need to recoup that half decade of losses. Buckle up.
Honestly, this is why we are here. I get it if you use their delivery because getting stuff can be hard depending on the area. But this stuff, where there are half dozen competing options… come on.
I wasn't specifically talking about this product alone, but about the general trend. I don't own any Amazon hardware.
A few years ago, piracy was all but dead because or really good offers like Netflix. All the stuff you wanted was there and the price was ok.
Now to get the same that you got for a tenner a month on Netflix, you have to pay for half a dozen of streaming services.
Youtube forces you to watch more ads than actual content. All services are increasing prices while decreasing what you are getting for that money. And all sorts of products are retroactively introducing ads.
I mean seriously, if someone bought that stick, they paid for it. They shouldn't have to worry about updates actively making the device worse.
It's an industry-wide trend that sucks, and it's one that creates resistance. People start pirating, use adblock and some hack their devices. Not because it's impossible to have a situation that suits everyone, but because they purpously use enshittification to suck more money out of their customers.
At this point just get a rasbperry pi, or some similar device, and run it as a regular computer. Firefox, ublock origin, don't worry about ads, and turn it into a machine that is capable of soooooooo much more. Hell, any PC will work. Steam Deck, NUC, that old laptop you have laying around? Been running little NUCs on my TVs for years and so happy I don't have to put up with that nonsense.
Which OS is good for this? Which remote can be used? I use my Stick to launch several apps like Plex, Smarttube Next, ARD Mediathek (German TV series). Not needing anything more. But a snappy remote and support for various audio and video codecs is key.
I run CoreELEC/LibreELEC on all my streaming devices. It only runs Kodi but since Kodi has tons of addons it is fairly easy to customize. Kodi also plays pretty much any codec in existence and has support for various remotes.
If you're planning to play 4k content you will want something with a little bit more power than a Raspberry Pi 4. For Dolby Vision you need one of the few supported devices.
Agreed. I started out with r-pi for the TV and and refuse to ever go back to just the smart-TV or stick interface. I've since moved on to more powerful HTPC/dedicated game server PC so I can host games for our friends but I still have the r-pi.
Honestly as nice as some of the smart TV or smart stick functions are, they're only nice because they're zero-effort. For just a slight amount of effort and no technical knowledge you can have a much better and safer setup.
Why do people still use those?
They’re cheap. That’s as far as some people think about it.
I use a fire stick because I'm familiar with them and they are much better than the shitty OS built into my TVs. Is there an alternative you recommend? I'm open to changing, especially with how theyve been pushing ads and paid rentals lately
If you have the money, I'd go for an NVIDIA Shield, or maybe an Apple TV. Well worth the money.
Otherwise, for budget, you could get a Chromecast, which gives you more control over it and has generally less garbage than the Fire TVs do for instance, since you can easily change its launcher and debloat with ADB.
I got a 4K Max one because it was only 35€. I want to upgrade to a shield pro successor which is overdue by now.
If you want to do this because of the full screen ads you may be too late.
Easy to sideload apps and use it for streaming, and I'm too lazy to set up my *arr self hosted media server with jellyfin again.
I complained about this to "support" a few days ago. A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.
Straight up told them I will pick another manufacturer this weekend.
I'm burned out on protecting myself from smart devices. Maybe just a dumb screen this round.
Edit: I have every single privacy setting set to off, but some update added a new category and defaults to on. Don't know how long Amazon has been spying on me or what they took.
My device has autoplay off already. It may have stopped a full screen video ad, but there is a full screen picture ad instead.
A full screen ad before the home screen with the top 1/3 an ad and the bottom 1/3 ads.
We're almost there
Why would support care, this is clearly a feature not a bug. Did you at least demand a refund on the device?
Glad I don't really watch content anymore. Though, between the Roku TV my kid has, and the big Samsung TV in our living room...my pihole is constantly hammered by both of them.
Which is why I just bought an nVidia Shield Pro. Custom launcher coming tomorrow. Time to start torrenting again.
Which launcher are you planning to use?
https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher probably. Not sure yet, but has to be FLOSS.
Isn't a firestick basically a chromecast? I mean, google is a shitty company in matters about privacy or ethics, but amazon isn't much better
I can cast to my internet-disabled TV anything to it, including pirate streaming sites with no ads. 20 years ago I ran a hdmi from my desktop and used a wireless touchpad to load downloaded stuff. It truly is the golden age of piracy
They're more like AndroidTV boxes with a full menu and HDMI-CEC support, only they came out back in the day when Chromecasts were just for casting. They were also dirt cheap; unfortunately that's because they were made with bargain-basement parts which often failed or started to overheat easily a few months in.
They have been built onto android until now, but i read that they wanted to ditch that and make their own os from scratch
Yeah, Chromecasts are much better than Fire TV's, due to the more control you have over them and how easy it is change the launcher vs. Amazon actively preventing it. Basically same price and budget as well. Plus Google running a newer version of Android in general vs. Amazon's, etc. Chromecasts are probably lesser of the two evils imo.
I have a fire tv cube just direct launch into apps to avoid this. For example instead of powering on the fire tv with power button I tell Alexa to open the app I need.
Down side is this doesn’t really work with sieloaded apps like smart tube
Sounds like this can be better avoided by not having an fire TV cube at all
If I hadn’t already disabled autoplays and blocked it from dialing home for updates, this might be a concern.
Lols :)